picking up the fundementals
by Lilac's Garden of Inspiration
Summary: Faced with a few roadblocks from here to the future, Uzumaki Naruto has started a new journey that's going to take him far. At some point during the war, Naruto realizes his goals have shifted with his worldview, this, of course, presents its own challenges. Foremost: the road to becoming a teacher, then in consequence, actually teaching bored academy students or twitchy genin.
1. plans change

After the war is over, the dust settled, the dead buried or burned, and the survivors are left to mourn, to rebuild and to grow around the adversities like they always do, he's left there, down a limb, and with a whole new set of expectations on his shoulders.

That thing with Sasuke is finally, finally, sorted out, at least to an extent where he fulfilled the promise he made those years ago.

While the ninja world came together to pull off a last stand against an overly powerful enemy no one mere shinobi could face on their own, the divides that were ingrained began to drive their coalition apart.

* * *

This was the peace that Nagato, that Jiraiya had sought. The peace that, by human nature should by no rights be attainable, but it was successful and they dealt with an alien goddess more than ten times as powerful than even the strongest regular shinobi.

That much was true, but what the spy networks reported and conspiracy theories that had started coming through the grapevine lately, it had him concerned that the shinobi world has far from seen the last of Kagura's kind.

* * *

And with that bite of information, and finally being on the road to recovery himself, Naruto found that his ambitions were changing.

He was already acknowledged by Konoha for his accomplishments, and maybe the dream of the Hokage's hat was what fueled him through training and then the Akatsuki fights, and Taka fights, the prelude to the war and the war against Kagura; was he the type that could handle that responsibility, of leading a small military force, when he was little more than a genin, in spite of what he had been through?

Food for thought, along with finding joy in learning, in teaching.

There was much that had to be done in terms of his future, that he was certain but now he knew he had friends and family to have his back.

Now, how to use chopsticks effectively with one hand and no balancing arm…


	2. reflecting on choices

They were out for lunch, Naruto's treat, when he sprung his news to Iruka.

Iruka-sensei, bless his heart, had nearly laughed himself sick when Naruto told him about his change of goals after some hard thinking, a year and a bit of readjusting to a calmer state of life, in which he may or may not have left a few notes and promptly fucked off to Suna for a vacation.

Naruto had pouted at the man through his bout of mirth, it was not funny, it was serious soul-searching, y'know, like Sasuke and Orochimaru were doing.

That comment made his former teacher choke on the tea he was drinking, and go back to his amusement; and when he felt able to speak again without laughing, he spoke in a near wheeze, "You truly are the number one unpredictable shinobi, Naruto, I'm proud of you."

Naruto, of course, spent the rest of his day beaming from ear to ear, with several tips on his chosen profession and plenty of extra respect for who was probably his favourite teacher


	3. forwards unto kiri

It took several months after his talk with Iruka to prepare for the next Chuunin exams, which were being held in Mizu.

During that time he trained, sparred with the rest of Squad 7, and the Konoha Rookies, got used to a prosthetic, which kept throwing him off of his game, and also traveled around, visiting and training with Gaara and B. Time spent well if you asked him.

Durinf that time he also had a chance to talk with his peers, and through questioning, both subtle and not, he discovered that of the people in the Konoha Rookies, only Shino and himself had decided on becoming academy teachers, while the rest had decided on becoming specialist jounin, and perhaps jounin senseis.

…

When it came time for the exams, Naruto found himself on a team with a pair of green genin whose usual teammate was ib the hospital for overdoing it, and wrenching their knee, dislocating their hip on that same side, and breaking their collarbone in 2 places doing something in the vein of showboating, he didn't ask, he didn't want to know.

You'd expect it was the mouthiest, 'watch me do this' kid that ended up in the hospital for like a month, but surprisingly, it hadn't been, it was the rising star on the team that had done the stupid thing and got injured for it. Naruto and his new team had had about a week prior to the exams to get used to each other and the new dynamic.

It was going to take a while.

,,,

The Kiri exam wasn't all that different from Konoha's exam, something recon and info gathering, something stealth and retrieval, and something combat.

Kind of a generous overview to what amounted to a giant scavenger hunt turned escort mission turned mostly non-lethal battle royale.

The scavenger hunt bit was retrieving a bit of a scroll from each of the 16 examiners, piece the scroll bits together, find another examiner that the scroll was referring to, then make sure that they get across these 3 connected lakes back to the arena, where the teams had about 2 days to rest before it was a massive 5-round battle royale.

The battle royale was where one person from each of the 15 teams present would get a coloured flag and would whale on the other people, over the course of 3 rounds, until 15 of the starting 45 were left in the semi finals, where it came down to the top 5 in the finals. The new Kiri exams were about 20 days long, much shorter than the Konoha exams, and possibly the fastest paced chuunin exams to exist.


End file.
